Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.

That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.

We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.

It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it.